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Drew Peterson in court today: Attorney Harry Smith testifies that Kathleen Savio asked him to speak out. Will his testimony be admitted?

UPDATE 2:00 CST:

Judge Burmila has ruled that the jurors for Peterson’s trial will be chosen from the original jury pool of 175 chosen two years ago

UPDATE 2:25 CST:

The media has been cleared from the courtroom while the defense argues to bar certain statements from Pastor Neil Schori who met with Stacy Peterson a few weeks before her disappearance. Schori has testified at pre-trial hearings that Stacy told him Drew “did it”, that he killed Kathleen and coached her for hours on what she should say to the police.

UPDATE 3:04 CST:

Judge Burmila has decided the scene of Kathleen Savio’s death cannot be recreated in court and ruled that three of seven video clips from Peterson are inadmissible.

UPDATE 4:11 CST:

Judge Burmilla rejects defense motion about prosecution’s alleged lack of evidence and tells them to instead raise objections in court and seek a directed verdict.

UPDATE 5:07 CST:

The judge is allowing four of the videos (seven total). However, he is allowing the others by the use of transcript. Harry Smtih is testifying that Kathleen Savio was afraid for her life and instructed him to speak out if anything happened to her.

UPDATE 5:38 CST:

Attorney Smith has testified that he has not told everything that Kathleen Savio told him, considering some of it to fall under attorney-client privilege. Judge Burmila says that he will meet with Smith privately tomorrow to hear him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RULINGS

Burmila rejected a defense motion on the potential pool of jurors. About 175 potential jurors previously filled out a questionnaire and were admonished not to follow news of the case. Peterson’s jurors likely will be picked from the original pool set aside in 2009, despite objections from his defense attorneys

Burmila sided with the prosecution in ruling that evidence Peterson owned a lock pick is admissible in court. The defense said there was an inference that Peterson used it and said there is no information as to how the Savio’s killer got in the home.

Burmila partially sided with the defense regarding the admission of TV interviews Peterson had given. Three videos were denied while four were deemed admissible. However the transcripts from the videos are admissible. The videos are from various news outlets.

Burmila gave a partial victory to the defense in banning, for now, testimony about a demonstration an expert did with a woman of Savio’s size to recreate how she died. The judge said an expert’s testimony will be limited to his observations of the bathtub.

Burmila cleared the courtroom of media during arguments over whether statements from Rev. Neil Schori will be allowed in the trial. Prosecutors said they want Schori to testify that Stacy Peterson told him she saw Drew Peterson return home late, dressed in black and carrying a bag of women’s clothing shortly before Savio was found dead. Burmila said he’ll rule on that question next week.

Burmila ruled that prosecutors must provide a daily notice of potential witnesses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Drew Peterson is in court today for arguments about pre-trial motions in advance of his trial for murder which begins at the end of July.

We’ll be updating this post throughout the day and keeping track of proceedings in the comments thread.

Rescue, maybe the state is just going to let that interview ride. considering it contains Peterson stating that his alibi witnesses are liars. Maybe there’ll be more interviews to come, with more statements that the state can use against Drew.
Joel Brodsky – “I am a good lawyer”

On Wednesday, Burmila rejected a defense motion on the potential pool of jurors. About 175 potential jurors previously filled out a questionnaire and were admonished not to follow news of the case.

Peterson’s attorneys argued that members of the jury pool, knowing that they could be participating in the case, would be more attracted to the media coverage. Defense attorney Joel Brodsky likened it to telling somebody to stand in a corner and not think about a pink striped elephant.

“They’re going to go to the corner and they’re going to think about the striped elephant,” Brodsky argued

Burmila, however, said there’s no reason to think the potential jurors aren’t following the original judges instructions and denied the motion.

It may relate to the same video evidence that was being looked at in motions two years ago:

…The defense was largely unsuccessful in getting what they asked for, but White was amenable to reviewing a video montage of Peterson and Brodsky’s media appearances. Prosecutors compiled the video to apparently show how Peterson told contradictory stories about his missing and dead wives during news interviews.

Defense attorney Steven Greenberg argued, “Just because (Peterson) said something on TV, it doesn’t come in unless it’s an admission” of guilt.

Greenberg also called the montage the “greatest hits of Drew and Joel on their world tour.”

White seemed to agree with Greenberg’s assessment of the video, saying that if it is the same tape he watched during the hearsay hearing, “there’s nothing on it.” Still, he agreed to watch the video again to see if it contains anything relevant and admissible.

FYI: directed verdict n. a verdict by a jury based on the specific direction by a trial judge that they must bring in that verdict because one of the parties has not proved his/her/its case as a matter of law (failed to present credible testimony on some key element of the claim or of the defense). A judge in a criminal case may direct a verdict of acquittal on the basis the prosecution has not proved its case, but the judge may not direct a verdict of guilty, since that would deprive the accused of the constitutional right to a jury trial

June 5, 2012 (JOLIET, Ill.) (WLS) — Drew Peterson returned to court Wednesday. The former Bolingbrook police sergeant’s murder trial begins in a little over a month.

The pretrial hearing was held as lawyers and the judge try to tie up loose ends regarding evidence and other issues.

The defense has filed a laundry list of motions. Many have to do with trying to get evidence thrown out of the case, including the testimony of Kathleen Savio’s lawyer. Other motions include Peterson’s many media appearances.

Before he was charged with the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson never met a camera he didn’t like. After the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, the ex-cop did several television interviews. Prosecutors plan to use clips from seven of Peterson’s TV appearances during the trial.

Wednesday, defense attorneys tried to get all the clips banned. The judge is allowing four of the on-camera interviews. The other three may be presented as transcript or audio only.

This was just one of many motions the defense has filed in this case. With others, Peterson’s lawyers are trying to get thrown out what they call speculative evidence about how Peterson allegedly broke into Savio’s home the night she was found dead in her bathtub in 2004.

“We don’t want them to be able to say to the jury, ‘Well, maybe someone came in through the window, maybe someone came in through the door, maybe someone came in through the garage, maybe someone slither in through the chimney. You figure out how they got in.’ That’s not right. They should have to prove how someone got into the house,” said Steve Greenberg, Peterson’s attorney.

The defense is asking the judge to throw out hearsay statements from Stacy Peterson’s pastor and from Kathleen Savio’s divorce attorney, Harry C. Smith. Savio supposedly told Smith, “If you die, you have to go to authorities and tell them Drew did it.”

“Lawyers are not supposed to tell what their clients say to them to other people,” said Peterson attorney Joe Lopez. “This is an important issue, not only in this case, but in all the other cases in the state of Illinois. You can’t have lawyers going out there telling people what their clients allegedly told them. That’s privileged.”

Prosecutors called Smith to the witness stand Wednesday afternoon. He told the judge that Savio told him that it was OK to waive her attorney-client privilege. So far the judge has not ruled on that motion.

Before he was charged with the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Peterson never met a camera he didn’t like. After the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, the ex-cop did several television interviews. Prosecutors plan to use clips from seven of Peterson’s TV appearances during the trial.

Wednesday, defense attorneys tried to get all the clips banned.

Wow. That is just mind-boggling. It was his attorney who trotted Peterson out before the cameras and now he doesn’t want anyone to see it. Just amazing…

HS: …in this situation my client had reached out in writing and orally, not only to me, but to others talking about a fear that something like this could happen. So it was a little more ominous, you know, to hear that she’d actually passed.

RC: Had she . . . she had written you letters concerned that Drew was going to kill her or hurt her.

HS: She had. I had a copy of a letter that she had sent to some other people and she’d written some letters to me generally that did talk about that.

RC: OK, so there was . . . she was fearful and this was . . . was this in that period of time after they were divorced, but before she died?

HS: No.

RC: This was before she was divorced?

HS: This was throughout the entire time period.

RC: OK. And how many of these, ah, um, “letters from the grave” were there, would you say?

HS: There’s a lot of them. I mean, it wasn’t always a letter saying “I, Kathy Savio state . . . ” That’s not how it went, but there were allusions to these fears in correspondences to my office. This is certainly in the letters. I think it was out there that this was sent to a couple of public officials, um . . .

RC: And does it say he would make it look like an accident?

HS: Yeah, that was sort of the tenor of it and, you know, it’s tough because there are many allegations that occur in the course of a divorce case. So it’s . . . sometimes you hear that and put it aside, but she did persistently make those claims, that’s, that is correct.

Just saw some snippets of interviews with the lawyers on WGN. It was hard not to laugh at the defense team all wearing dark glasses (though the sun was not in their faces) blustering and being snide. If I knew nothing about this case I would have looked at that bunch and wondered who this collection of a-holes was.

Divorce attorney Harry Smith may be able to testify that Drew Peterson’s third wife confided to him that Peterson would kill her, a Will County judge ruled Wednesday, but only after the judge questions Smith alone about information he has so far withheld from authorities.

Smith, who represented Peterson’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, was called to testify Wednesday in a hearing over whether Savio had waived the attorney-client privilege before her 2004 death.

Attorneys for Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant charged with drowning Savio, had sought to bar Smith from testifying on the grounds that the privilege was still intact.

Judge Edward Burmila ruled the privilege had been waived but said he was concerned Smith hadn’t shared information that could be helpful to Peterson. Smith testified that he believed some information was still privileged.

“What reason should there be to hold back any information?” Burmila said.

He told the attorneys he would question Smith privately and then rule whether Smith must also testify about the so-far-undisclosed information. Burmila said if he decides Smith must testify completely and he refuses, the judge might bar all of Smith’s testimony.

The judge also ruled that the jury for next month’s trial will be culled from a panel assembled almost three years ago and ordered to avoid Peterson media coverage. Defense attorneys had sought to have a new group of potential jurors assembled.

Eight motions were argued Wednesday, with Burmila clearing the courtroom for arguments over whether statements from the Rev. Neil Schori will be allowed.

Prosecutors plan to call Schori to testify that Peterson’s missing fourth wife, Stacy, told him she saw Peterson return home late, dressed in black and carrying a bag of women’s clothing shortly before Savio was found dead.

Burmila is expected to rule on that issue next week.

After Wednesday’s hearing, Mitchell Doman, Savio’s brother-in-law, complained Peterson was getting “Joe Hollywood” treatment in court. He noted Peterson was joking with Sheriff Paul Kaupas before the hearing and said he saw Peterson handcuff himself after it was over.

Greenberg also imitated Smith’s voice as he mocked the attorney’s supposed motivation for coming forward again after Stacy Peterson vanished.

“I’m going to get my piece of this and I’m going to get my face on TV and I’m going to get my publicity,” Greenberg said in his Smith voice.

I wonder why Greenberg doesn’t mock Brodsky in his imitation-Brodsky-voice for all the face-time on TV and publicity Brodsky orchestrated for years? You know, to get his fifteen minutes of fame and create a name for himself due to the plight of Drew Peterson.

Isn’t there any defense team-member who isn’t a moron? If Peterson gets convicted and it has anything to do with the antics Brodsky helped him participate in, I find it ironic that some of the other team members would be appalled, since at least one in particular looks as unprofessional and moronic as Brodsky, regardless of the expensive suit and sunglasses.

I don’t know, maybe hot shades have special powers, not unlike Scotty of the Starship Enterprise and his beam-me-up abilities.

This is what I find ironic. Brodsky was leading Peterson around on a constant basis in the media for months and months prior to his arrest. In fact, the prosecution is using the face time in their case to highlight inconsistencies in Peterson’s recollection of events. To that end, three face time moments have his goof of an attorney sitting next to him, but the judge won’t allow the sight of the two of them into the prosecution’s case–only the transcripts or audio. Why, so the jury won’t see how his lawyer sold his client down the river by letting him open his big trap instead of reining him in and keeping him silent? Does the judge want to avoid having the jury wonder why Peterson was allowed to give interviews, against common legal advice? On top of that, the idiot who orchestrated it all asked the judge to keep the interviews out of the trial!!!! In other words, he wanted his case tried in the media, but doesn’t want the fallout of the mess heard by jurors in court. Wow, smart move. You lose!!!

Parading a client around, as Peterson was, and letting him yap and yap, is against what the past and present co-counsel engage in. I think it’s safe to say they all agree it’s wise and solid advice to have a client resist public attention and stay away from the limelight. It must be trying and difficult for the non-Brodsky defense team members to refrain from pointing out what a disaster the pre-arrest and post-arrest publicity is, and how woefully counseled the murder defendant was by being allowed to put his foot in his mouth.

I don’t know, why don’t the present defense team members run for the hills because of all the in-house nonsense they have going on? If, on one hand, they’re united in wanting to keep out media appearances during the trial, but stand by and pretend not to notice it’s STILL going on, what are they thinking?????

If Greenberg is so appalled and has to break into a new voice to mock another attorney, who he claims is both in violation of his oath and looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, how is it that he can stand beside Joel Brodsky? The Brodsky that sat next to Peterson during Geoff Pinkus’ radio show, and pretended not to KNOW that the liquor/food establishment Peterson was hawking was BRODSKY’S OWN PERSONAL BUSINESS? Isn’t that violating his oath by using his client for his own gain? Isn’t that unprofessional and self-serving? I guess it’s all good, though, with Greenberg and the other attorneys, because they don’t seem to find the need to use their pretend voices for that.

How can Greenberg, or anyone else, for that matter, stand next to Joel Brodsky and pretend not to know that Brodsky is using their mutual client to get publicity for himself? How could they stay silent after seeing their client’s mug on the front page of the Sun Times, calling his late ex-wife a hellcat, and blaming all of his wives for his failed marriages? That’s helping their client????

Who would have benefited the most if a new attorney (or attorneys) would have come along and publicly denounced the past and present antics and worked to rehabilitate the murder defendant’s lousy image? The lack of concern on the part of the remaining defense team speaks volumes. Do they mean to say THEY are not looking for their fifteen minutes of fame as the attorneys for one of the most prominent murder defendants of the decade?

Heh, maybe Abood, Lenard and Odeh will write their own books, and we’ll get to read what really is behind the mess that is Drew Peterson case. At least they admitted to leaving BECAUSE of their differences with BRODSKY. High road?

2004: Public records show an Illinois disciplinary board suspended Brodsky law license for three months. This action was taken as a result of Brodsky signing a dead man’s name to close the inactive bank account of a client’s estate. Brodsky signed the dead man’s name a second time to cash a $23,000 check from that same account.

2002: Over the years there were 3 domestic calls to Brodsky home. One involving a SWAT team after his wife, Elizabeth, told police that Joel Brodsky was in the house armed with a shotgun and was threatening to kill him.

The Police report said:
“Mr. Brodsky exclaimed, ‘That’s right. You leave, get out of here, now I’m going to do it right and blow my head off with this shotgun.'”

Wearing dark glasses just makes it that much easier to be an a-hole. Notice that they aren’t even standing in the sunshine. Glasgow gave his sound bite from the same location and wasn’t afraid to show his eyes.

BTW, the new kid sans shades is a law student from Northwestern. His name is Sevon Avakian. (He didn’t get the memo)

IMO, Judge Burmilla doesn’t want to be the one to ‘prove’ the case of malpractice against the team of boobs representing DP in his murder trial. The ethical attorneys, Abood, Lenard and Odeh, took the high road and left that moron circus.

We all have observed attorneys successfully representing their clients in a professional manner,

As Facs and Rescue point out … for the past several years we have been unimpressed by the circuslike antics of mouthpieces who lower themselves into the gutter to carry out and magnify the inane defense strategies and behavior of their wisea$$ ex-cop client.

What else are they supposed to do? It appears to be too difficult to cover up damning evidence.

Maybe the existing jury pool appears to be too intelligent for this defense team. ^_^

The defense seems to be fighting very hard to keep out Smith’s testimony. Could their logic be to keep pounding on Smith in the media so the image they’re trying to create of him leaves a bad impression in the public? Is this to deflect the impact of his testimony, and what still may be to come?

It’s no secret that both Kathleen and Stacy made comments about knowing things about Drew Peterson. Obviously, that would mean they were involved by keeping silent about goings-on that aren’t exactly pretty. I’m not implying they did anything wrong, but they may have had knowledge of illegal activities, etc., that they kept their mouths closed about.

Maybe, in particular, Kathleen acknowledged this to Harry Smith, and that is what he’s claiming is still part of the attorney/client privilege.

I hope HS informs the judge that any illegal activities that DP’s wives, Kathleen and Stacy might have known about or been involved in had to be because of the insidious manner in which DP operated. DP’s financial operations in his many businesses, bar ownership and personal relationships come to mind. There are plenty of violations, suspensions, forced sales and violence notated in public records.

insidious
adjective
1. intended to entrap or beguile: an insidious plan.
2. stealthily treacherous or deceitful: an insidious enemy.
3. operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect: an insidious disease.

Now that they’ve called Harry Smith a liar and a fame-whore and cried to the heavens that he should be barred from the legal profession for violating the attorney-client privilege, they now want him to cough up everything Kathleen said in the hopes that they can use something in Peterson’s favor.

It’s impossible to keep track of what the defense is whining about. On one hand, they say he violated the attorney client privilege by coming forward with this information, although it took him three years to do so. On the other hand, Lopez says it never happened. He’s lying. All in the same interview.

Attorneys for Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant charged with drowning Savio, had sought to bar Smith from testifying on the grounds that the privilege was still intact.

Now, I’m not a legal scholar, but if you watch the above video, it doesn’t take much to realize no one is on the same page. They’re just throwing out soundbites. How is Smith violating the privilege if he’s lying about it? Just a simple question….

Greensberg doesn’t want the prosecution to say “may be someone got in through the garage, maybe some one got in through a window…etc…” I agree with that, instead just use how examples of how Drew gained entry in the past.

…At least one woman and three men, including an attorney and a Bolingbrook police officer, went to the state police soon after her body was discovered and tried to report the suspicions they harbored about her ex-husband, Drew Peterson.
Savio’s boyfriend, Steve Maniaci, not only talked to police, but confronted Peterson in person:

Savio’s boyfriend of two years, Steve Maniaci, said he approached Drew Peterson outside Savio’s house on the night her body was found and asked if he had killed her. Peterson denied any involvement, Maniaci testified.

“It sure worked out well for you, Drew,” Maniaci said.

“She wouldn’t have won anyway,” Peterson replied, according to Maniaci.

Maniaci said he told police about Peterson and Savio’s tumultuous relationship and the knife incident shortly after her body was found.

Kathleen Savio’s divorce attorney Harry Smith had heard Savio’s fears and had promised her he would speak out if something happened to her…and he did:

“I attempted to do what she told me to do,” Smith said. “I had to go to the authorities and tell them Drew did it.
“I called,” Smith said. “I told him who I was and I told him essentially the complaint and the thing Kathleen had told me. At least I attempted to.”

Heh. Every time I look at and hear Greenberg make a big deal out of “not one person” coming forward after Kathleen’s death in this video, I’m reminded that defense attorneys are all about smoke and mirrors. If they say it, it must be true. Not!

There’s also a comment Lopez made some time ago, during his participation in the mock trial of Drew Peterson, about how “close” Stacy Peterson’s relationship with Scott Rosetto was, yet she never told him about knowing DP killed Kathleen. Facs pointed it out in a JC thread:

One thing I noted at the beginning of Part Four; Lopez goes on about Scott Rosetto and Stacy’s relationship and how close it was and isn’t it strange that Stacy never mentioned to him that Drew killed Kathleen? He’s going to have to drop that bit now that we know she did tell Rosetto that very thing.

In JC’s FAQ:

Did Stacy Peterson tell anyone that Drew killed Kathleen?
In the weeks before her disappearance Stacy Peterson confided to three people that Drew had killed Kathleen Savio: her Pastor, Neil Schori; a lawyer, Harry Smith; and a friend, Scott Rossetto.

When it comes to trying to bar evidence/testimony in this case the defense has exhibited some downright schizophrenic arguments.

If a witness was told about Drew killing Kathy (or Kathy’s fears that she’d be killed) and they came forward, then according to the defense, they have violated either a sacred oath, a counselor’s privilege, or attorney-client privilege and are therefore the scum of the earth for divulging these confidences.

If the testimony is deemed admissible despite that argument, then suddenly the witnesses are money-grubbing fame-whores and above all filthy liars!

It’s funny because in the first case, in order to bar the testimony there is an assumption that there were actual confidences there to protect, yet it doesn’t keep the defense from doing a 180 as soon as the testimony is deemed admissible to then decry it all as despicable lies.

Then the defense swoops in to point out that the witness didn’t go to authorities with what they heard in a timely enough manner (according to the defense). We are supposed to interpret any delay or failure to get the attention of the authorities as an indication of something REALLY BAD about the witness. They appear to be hoping that if they sneer and mock the witness sufficiently then the court will make an oblique jump in logic so that a delay in getting the message to authorities means that their testimony is fabricated.

While making this argument the defense is really hoping you’ll forget the whole earlier arguments about privilege and confidence, because of course if you think about that, you’ll logically assume that the witness might very well have been considering the ethics of coming forward and how much of what they knew could or should be shared. The defense is hoping the court won’t accept that ethical consideration and respect for the confidences of the victim might be the very thing that delayed their coming forward.

You’d think it would be kind of embarrassing to argue out of one side of your mouth and then the other. (Harry Smith shouldn’t be allowed to talk. No, wait! Now we want him to be allowed to testify to everything! No. we mean he’s a preposterous liar! Well, only if he’s allowed to testify to the bad stuff our client did.) Especially when all the accompanying sneers and insults are recorded for posterity.

I went back to youtube for some defense sound bites from back in 2010 when Atty Smith testified at the hearsay hearings, to see how Joel was addressing his testimony at that time.

At that point there wasn’t a peep from the defense about attorney-client privilege nor was Smith accused of being a liar. Brodsky is on tape saying that it was Kathleen who lied to Smith because she “would have said anything to hurt Drew”.

Yup they just fling whatever they think of in the hopes that something will stick.

FYI, I’m expecting to see either a FOX special on the Peterson cases, or an interview with someone close to the case since they’ve been researching the blog/our documents for hours on a daily basis this last week.

According to this interview with Harry Smith, he made all public documents available to the ISP at the time of Kathleen’s death inquest. I also wonder if the coroner was ever shown them?

Doug (caller): Hi. I was wondering, was the coroner’s inquiry aware of the recalled, rescinded restraining order, and of the you know, of the written out, you know, fear of threats that she had?

RC: OK, let’s go back and discuss that a little bit. We were talking about that, that coroner’s inquiry into the death of Kathy Savio, when it was assumed that she had drowned in the dry bathtub, and they had come up with, with, with their findings, in which they thought it was an accidental death, were they aware that she had written to people saying that, that ah, saying that she thought that Drew was going to do her harm.

HS: You know my, at the time that the State Police were conducting the investigation into Kathy Peterson’s death my partner Jay Fuller had compiled everything that we had to give them, but I don’t know that Jay ever gave anything to the coroner. So unless the coroner was somehow working in conjunction with the State Police investigation — and I should also say that I did not testify at that coroner’s inquiry, inquest and am not privy to what happened — so I don’t know all the information that was given to them. I would assume so.

RC: Now, why wouldn’t you have? Why wouldn’t information that you had have been relevant to them?

HS: Well, I mean, hearsay’s admissible, so someone certainly could have forwarded whatever facts they gathered through the court file or through me, ah, to the hearing. That would have been possible. That information could be delivered from another person, so I would not necessarily be present for something like that just because I was the attorney for the divorce.

(MCT) — The family of an Ottawa, Ill., woman whose 2006 drowning in a toilet was ruled a homicide last year has filed a civil lawsuit against her husband, a local firefighter, claiming he killed her.

No criminal charges have been filed in Tracy Cusick’s death, which her family has said is “eerily similar” to the 2004 bathtub drowning of Kathleen Savio. Former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson is charged with Savio’s murder and scheduled to go on trial next month.

Cusick, 32, and her husband, Ottawa firefighter Kenneth Cusick, were having marital problems and were the only adults in their home at the time of her death, her family said. Her husband said he found her with her face floating in the water, police said.

Authorities initially said there were no signs of foul play, but her body was exhumed in 2010 and a second autopsy was performed, which detected injuries to her throat and face. At a LaSalle County coroner’s inquest last year, a detective testified that a police investigation found it would have been impossible for Cusick to drown in the toilet “without a second party exerting some outside force.” A coroner’s jury ruled that her death was a homicide…